More groundbreaking research funded by the NIH. It's sad to think about how much the US is going to lose with the arbitrary slashing and burning and purging.
Most research that is pointed towards important things does get funding from NIH. Most research fails. NIH has a bucket of money for every major issue facing the population. Just takes a few PhD's and a hypothesis to write a proposal.
So long as the research has a conclusion, it's not a failure. We learned something. There may be something to be said for whether or not the research is a worthy topic, but that's a different conversation.
Without some research the current President would probably not be healthy enough to be in office, clearly we have to reduce the risk of that happening again.
Failure in big companies is very common too. They lead to reorganisation, retries and new ways of working.
Why is it accepted in the private sector, but not in the public sector?
The most frustrating thing is they all get away with endless daily lies and just move onto the next subject, NIH might never recover, certainly not this decade.
> Hours after Musk asserted that USAID had restored its Ebola prevention efforts, the agency informed several organizations working with the U.S. government to prevent the spread of the virus overseas that their contracts had been terminated
> organizations — which included UNICEF, which had been working with USAID on Ebola prevention in Uganda and other countries — were among thousands of organizations affected by the Trump administration’s move to cancel foreign-assistance contracts
The American consumer gets a treatment that didn't exist yesterday and whose IP will be free in ~15 years for their tax dollars. A pretty reasonable give and take on the face of it.
(Not that polices to reduce the cost to Americans, especially relative to foreign markets, ought to be unpopular)
> Other countries also get access at 1/3 the price.
1) Many other countries don't have the ass backwards healthcare system that we have
2) Then there are the poorer countries. It turns out that things like providing them cheap food & medicine manages to a) provide a source of soft power & influence in the world, and b) helps us by helping them by limiting the spread of various diseases and maladies
It's all well and good to suggest that each program receiving funding gets a thorough review. Of course, that review needs to be by experts, to ensure it gets a fair shake. Who are the experts in the field? The odds that you can be an expert in the field (by publication count, let's say) without having already been funded by the NIH is pretty slim. So now your experts are also insiders.
That's going to be a big problem as very few insiders are going to be willing to rock the boat. Even if it's necessary.
Maybe you've got a good idea of how to solve this "good review requires experts, experts are very likely insiders, insiders are unlikely to rock the boat" problem. It would be wonderful if there was some solution, even if it was hard.
> Maybe you've got a good idea of how to solve this "good review requires experts, experts are very likely insiders, insiders are unlikely to rock the boat" problem.
You're the one who has identified this as a problem, shouldn't you be the one to suggest an alternative?
The alternative being implemented is that insiders could not police themselves, so outsiders are doing it for them with far less precision.
It’s like a hoarders show where everyone is shocked (SHOCKED!) that things had gotten as bad as it is, the hoarder has lost the capability to determine what is valuable or necessary, so a third party with no attachment or sentiment comes in to clean house and throws out the good with the bad.
Couldn't at least part of the reviewing be done by foreign experts?
Having said that, this smells witch-hunty to me. The US can boast decades of excellence in medical and biological sciences, which in turn generates a massive windfall. Completely upending the architecture behind this dominance on the suspicion that a few hundred million bucks are less-than-optimally spent is a hell of a gambit, and even ignores all the higher-order effects that even that "spare change" bring about.
You've made at least 2-3 personal attacks against me while seemingly not even trying to address the problem that I highlighted. If that's your goal, OK. It definitely goes against the spirit of the rules here if not the letter.
Delaying the flu vaccine? Ok that's bad, sure.
It's also a real goalpost move and also doesn't address the technical problem "insiders going to inside" I raised in answer to the parent's paraphrased "I can't understand this, why is this necessary?"
I don't know that doing things this way is strictly necessary. But I also don't think it's reasonable to just hand-wave away or worse completely fail to even acknowledge much less actually address the insiders problem.
Q> Can you explain why the sledge hammer approach, removing funding for things wholesale and causing large amounts of destruction (both economic and health) is reasonable?
And your answer was
A> It looks like there is a problem with the current system, and changing something would be beneficial.
And, while I agree that the sentiment ("changing something would be beneficial") is fair... as an answer it falls squarely into "We should do something, this is something, so we should do this", which is categorically ridiculous. The way to approach these types of issues, where changing things can (and does) have real, significant impact on lots of people, is to come up with a plan and discuss what the impacts/tradeoffs are. It is _not_ to just do the first thing that comes to mind and then ignore the people who's lives your destroying.
We spend a large portion of the federal budget on human death prevention. It sounds like hyperbole, but anyone dying from administrative changes is literally “world ending” for them.
If a plan to cut bureaucracy was somehow analyzed to find that we could save 5% of the US budget in exchange for 10,000 lives, reasonable people might consider otherwise. To take these changes against life-saving organizations without first analysis of consequences is pretty reckless.
> But I also don't think it's reasonable to just hand-wave away or worse completely fail to even acknowledge much less actually address the insiders problem.
ok but burning down a house with a family in it because of a hypothetical burglar usually isn't a good solution.
It's simple, really. Make it so the experts have 0 leverage. Maybe have "the workers" make all the decisions! ??? Profit? :-) They tried this in Soviet Union...
I'm sure you have direct economic interests. Odds are good someone in your circle is type 1 diabetic, and helping that person will indirectly help you.
I was referring to the election of Trump and the people he's appointed. Everything was rotting from the inside out and infested, and like with everything that is rotted/rusting, you will have to carve it all out to clean it, and sometimes you unfortunately take out legitimate and healthy things.
Again, back to my original point. We've been "trying" this "surgical" approach for decades, and a lot of people believe that it wasn't working with things getting objectively and subjectively worse. Why? I'd argue it's because people's concerns and sincere requests for debate or voicing of their concerns has been met with derision, dismissal, gaslighting and downright cancellation. I'm not trying to debate it here, but my overall point is that people's concerns, criticisms and request for genuine debate have not been listened to, and now the pendulum has arguably swung way too far in response. Perhaps next time around we won't be so dismissive and hostile, and actually meet in the middle.
As a personal aside, the scientific/medical community (overlapping heavily with NIH) has not been able to 'surgically' prevent the advent of crazy child-mutilation and sterilization in the supposedly-enlightened West, so how do you expect average people that disagree with it to try approach it with civility? We've reached absolute peak madness, so of course debate and "surgical" type approaches are out of the window at this point. We must do better next time around.
Ah yes. Trying to have a civil and productive conversation with people who insist we're at "absolute peak madness" of "crazy child-mutilation".
Those aren't sincere people; they're living in an alternate reality warped by propaganda.
Of course I realize this is a deliberately created wedge issue precisely so those folks can claim the burden is on the rest of us to engage properly. And when we're exhausted by debunking bullshit they can claim we're being elitist and dismissive. Brilliant strategy that's taken our country to an illustrious and proud moment...
I could just as well argue that your explanation of this is also a "brilliant strategy" to dismiss any potentially valid concerns the other side may have.
If we can't even get this dynamic right, and both sides have convoluted and elaborate ways to dismiss the other, then surely we can all agree that there will absolutely never be any reconciliation or meeting of the minds of the two groups? Leaving only forced indoctrination, silencing of opinions and plain separation of the two groups into physically different governments/countries.
The important thing is that these things get funded. It doesn't matter what institute funds them. If an institute becomes stultified and corrupt, there's no reason to champion it over creating another.
That's true, but I have lots of experience with the NIH, and haven't found it stultified nor corrupted. In fact, did you hear they recently funded a project that reversed type 1 diabetes?
Besides what others have said, the government is immune from many of the multi-agent coordination problems that trap other types of entities. It's basically the essential reason we have government at all.
So no, not all things government does can be replaced by the private sector, for reasons of game theory.
Slashing is not permanent. It is important to slash in order to determine a middle ground. If a company fires 100 employees and certain operations stop functioning, they may hire back 10 employees and reassess. If operations are still not functional enough, they will hire 10 more. This process continues until everything is operational again. The result is a company that functions just as effectively as before but with fewer employees. This is an optimization of resources and efficiency.
>It is important to slash in order to determine a middle ground
That's not true.
> If a company fires 100 employees and certain operations stop functioning, they may hire back 10 employees and reassess
How likely is it that 10 employees come back? How likely is it that critical institutional knowledge is lost forever?
> The result is a company that functions just as effectively as before but with fewer employees
Does it? Have you ever been through a reorg or restructuring at work? Do things ever get back to just as effective as before any time soon?
> This is an optimization of resources and efficiency
It's squandering human capitol, knowledge and reduced efficiency both in the short term and long term. It's the most expensive way to reduce your overhead. A far cry from optimization.
> How likely is it that critical institutional knowledge is lost forever?
In the digital age, almost impossible. Documentation, process automation, and knowledge transfer mitigate this risk.
> Does it? Have you ever been through a reorg or restructuring at work? Do things ever get back to just as effective as before any time soon?
Yes, I've been through many re-orgs at AWS. If done right, things get better fairly quickly (3-6 months).
> It's squandering human capital, knowledge, and reduced efficiency both in the short term and long term. It's the most expensive way to reduce your overhead. A far cry from optimization.
Not necessarily. The short-term pain of restructuring can lead to long-term efficiency gains. Organizations that fail to optimize end up bloated and sluggish, which is far more costly in the long run. Smart cuts, when combined with proper reallocation of resources, create a more effective organization.
> In the digital age, almost impossible. Documentation, process automation, and knowledge transfer mitigate this risk.
Nobody is so thorough at documenting that their job is 100% documented and the documentation is fully up to date.
You think Jim, who's been training the new hires on the factory floor for a decade, who knows all the tricks to making this fit together at wiget factory even when the process instructions are vague, has documented everything?
Could document everything?
Just be cause digital records are present doesn't mean they're complete, up to date or accurate.
Institutional knowledge is a thing, and it's very valuable. You can't wave it away and say we're in a digital age.
> You think Jim, who's been training the new hires on the factory floor for a decade, who knows all the tricks to making this fit together at wiget factory even when the process instructions are vague, has documented everything?
No, I don't think so. That's why the lay-offs predominantly target probationary employees.
Correct. The majority are not promoted. If they are in the first year of their current level/role and have previous experience, they still haven't accumulated much institutional knowledge to make them indispensable. While experience helps, their impact in a new role is still developing, and their departure is less likely to disrupt operations significantly.
Your last sentence undermines the point in this case. What Musk and Trump are doing are hardly "smart cuts". They couldn't possibly be, with how quickly executed. They are a sledgehammer.
It hasn't been limited to probationary employees. Here's one example: https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-ban-renewing-sen...
Agencies have also been directed to make plans for "significant reductions". For example, EPA plans to cut 65%. Fish and Wildlife and the Bureau of Indian Affairs are preparing for up to 40%. These latter cuts haven't happened yet, but they're very likely.
That's correct. It hasn't been limited to probationary employees only, but many are. Those who are not either aren't needed or will be rehired if operations cannot continue without them.
It's not just about the literal employee contracts. Telling all USAID workers to cease operations and come home within 30 days is still a "cut" even if they are still employed. Not hiring seasonal workers for national parks is a cut. Removing info from the CDC website is a cut. Cancelling the meeting on flu vaccines is a cut.
It's a very hamfisted deliberate disruption of all operations and services. Which, again, can hardly be called "targeted" by any metric.
> In the digital age, almost impossible. Documentation, process automation, and knowledge transfer mitigate this risk.
Are you sure you really work at AWS? Dude, how often do you realize the documentation is not sufficient and you have to dig through people's brain to actually get the nuances, that is, lucky enough they are still around? lolll
How the heck do you apply this process to fundamental research? It's pretty much always the case that with basic research you could have cut 95% of studies after the fact and it wouldn't have made much difference in the end.
The problem is you don't know which 95% of studies beforehand.
Neither companies nor governments fire 100% of their personnel unless a division is no longer needed. Governments, especially, have safeguards to ensure essential functions continue, so they don't simply stop functioning all of a sudden. From a bird's-eye view, a government is not much different from a company. They both allocate resources, manage personnel and strive for efficiency.
